Storytelling is increasingly recognized as a key discipline and activity to bring ideas to the market and to build customer loyalty. As a result, both new media storytelling and new media advertising (e.g., mobile advertising, leveraging social media, creating virals) have become an inclusive part of a new marketing strategy, presently barely covered by the existing curricula in many schools. Training new functional profiles, specialized in developing advertisement for use in interactive and online audiovisual media, will therefore sit at the heart of this project. Schools of different educational levels, dedicated to train media professionals, are facing the challenge of dealing with this market transformation and prepare students to become successful employees or entrepreneurs in the new market. Through the exchange of good practices, the main goal of the project is to improve existing curricula to include the techniques of storytelling. For this purpose the project partners will develop two toolboxes to professionalize and trigger students and educators (RIGA communiqué) , to meet the following strategic objectives, recommended in the Strategic Framework ET 2020 to member states:- improving the quality and efficiency of education and training;- making lifelong learning and mobility a reality;- enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training.Concerning entrepreneurship, the idiosyncrasy of the highly fragmented audiovisual labour market specifically, requires professionals with a transversal training to strengthen their entrepreneurial capacity and improve employability (http://www.creativeskillseurope.eu/trends-in-europe).Therefore, a second major goal of the project aims to provide guidelines and resources to increase the skills of entrepreneurship. It will integrate accelerator programs and boot camps in the program and encourage entrepreneurial students to explore and develop their talents individually and in a team of peers. By doing so, the project will provide a safe, but catalytic learning environment for participants, in line with actions proposed by the ‘Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan’.
Commercialpolis partners are schools of different educational levels dedicated to train media professionals from Lisbon, Newcastle, Jyväskylä, Madrid, Rotterdam and Ghent. St. Gallen has been acting as an associated partner. (see also: www.commercialpolis.eu 'Partners') The main goal of the project was to improve existing curricula to include the techniques of storytelling. A second major goal of the project aimed to provide guidelines and resources to increase the skills of entrepreneurship. In other words, encourage the entrepreneurial mindset which is particularly important in the creative sector. To obtain the objectives, six Learning Teaching and Training meetings have been organized. Every meeting focused on a specific area of storytelling in commercials such as target group, image campaign, personal branding and new technologies. Moreover, they have been quite useful to improve entrepreneurship skills for teachers and, as a consequence, for the students. (see also: www.commercialpolis.eu 'Project meetings') Previously to every meeting, students had to develop pre-work which was an initial contact with the main topic of the week. The goal was to start getting knowledge through a real production. The pre-work assignment was also a way to keep the project in between the L.T.T. There were meetings and learning activities from one meeting to another at a national level to prepare the pre-work and the L.T.T. with the students involved, so the impact on the students has been maintained along the whole project, not only during the L.T.T. (see also: www.commercialpolis.eu and look at the details in 'Project meetings') Cards for storytelling and entrepreneurship toolbox have been done by teachers also in between. (see: http://www.commercialpolis.eu/toolbox/ ) Within each L.T.T. we had several keynote speakers who were specialist on the subject of the meetings. Afterwards we had several keynote speakers who were specialist on the subject of the meetings. They aimed to inspire creativity and give ideas and professional procedures to help the students to accomplish the task proposed to them in the project week. The students worked in nationality mixed teams, which is important for them to improve communication skills, knowledge on other cultures and different approaches to making commercials. The schedule of the L.T.T. usually was organized as follows: • Day1: presenting pre-work, feedback, ice breaker activity, keynotes and assignment for the week. • Day 2: inspiring activities and keynotes. Briefing and pre-production for the assignment in multinational teams. • Day 3: filming the assignment. Teachers work on the toolboxes. • Day 4: post-production, preparation of the presentation. Teachers go on with toolboxes. • Day 5: presentation of the results of the assignment, feedback and short introduction of the new subject for the next L.T.T. With the inputs of the pre-work assignment, keynotes and results of the week, the teachers involved in the project developed cards which can be used to improve methods and curricula in their own schools. These cards propose techniques of storytelling and entrepreneurship in the creative business. All the pre-work and results of the assignment of the week, keynote presentations and making of videos are uploaded to a website http://www.commercialpolis.eu, which also contains the toolboxes with the cards made by the teachers along the project to be used by colleagues and other educational institutions http://www.commercialpolis.eu/toolbox/. An added value of this project is the internationalization of students and teachers. At every meeting, from every partner, about two to three teachers and four to six students were participating. More than 121 students visits and 103 teachers visits took place during this project. It must be taken into account that a lot of them have participated in more than one meeting, specially teachers, for the benefit of continuation during the project. Added the visits of the associated partner St. Gallen the total amount of visits comes to 320. There have been also many companies involved in the preparation an during the week itself. Their role was a consulting one, to be keynote speakers, act as the client, giving feedback. This had a positive impact on the relation between schools and the companies. The impact of the L.T.T. was measured by a survey which was filled out by all the participants after each project week. The goal was to improve and keep the project on track with the feedback of the teachers and students involved. The productive way of working together within an international network is expected to expand in future European projects, given that all the schools involved realize that international approach is needed in the creative industries.